Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Render unto the Sultan: Power, Authority, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the Early Ottoman Centuries by Tom Papademetriou
Following his conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Fatih Mehmed had to decide what to do with the office of the patriarchate. According to the chronicler Kritovoulos, Mehmed chose a monk known as Scholarios, born Georgios Kourtesis, who took the patriarchal name of Gennadios II, and elevated him to that post in January 1454. Although Kritovoulos is the only contemporary source to mention Gennadios’s elevation to the patriarchate, historians both of the Orthodox Church and of the Ottoman Empire have accepted that the event occurred. What privileges and obligations came with that office, however, have been points of controversy at least since the sixteenth century, when Orthodox Church leaders in the Ottoman capital sought to gain the sultan’s support for their claim that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was the spiritual head of all of the diverse Orthodox populations of the empire. Tom Papademetriou’s [End Page 433] book demonstrates how the office gradually evolved from that date through the end of the sixteenth century. In charting that evolution, the author lays to rest the foundation myth of the millet system as it was known in the late eighteenth century as having been created in 1454. Scholars have long suspected that was the case but had not been as diligent as Papademetriou in tracking down the relevant documentation to establish the Ottoman understanding of the office.
The millets of the late eighteenth century divided the Christians of the Ottoman Empire into distinct communities headed by a patriarch. Although they were elected by church synods, the sultan gave each patriarch a berat (letter of appointment) and could replace them at his whim. Within the millets, however, the patriarchs enjoyed a level of autonomy. The patriarchs’ clerical bureaucracies oversaw the education of Christian youth, the ordination of clergy, the collection of ecclesiastical dues and tithes, the maintenance of church properties, and the implementation of personal status law (marriage, divorce, and inheritance). The clerical hierarchies collaborated with the sultan and his men within the larger imperial system, and the state bureaucrats in turn usually validated and supported the Church’s authority in matters of religious faith and community. Papademetriou uses a variety of Greek and Ottoman sources to show how the office of the Patriarch of Constantinople served the Ottoman state and was in turn supported by the sultans, leading to a strengthening of the Patriarch’s position as chief prelate over the various Orthodox communities of the empire.
That evolution did not come easily, as Sultan Mehmed’s successors did not always share his apparent vision of the patriarchate. His great-grandson Süleyman (1520–1566), not long after his succession to the throne, sought to confiscate the remaining Orthodox churches in Istanbul on the legal grounds that if an infidel city had resisted conquest by Muslims, its inhabitants forfeited all their religious buildings to the conquerors. The then reigning Patriarch Theoleptos claimed that Sultan Mehmed had given his predecessor Patriarch Gennadios a berat confirming his authority over the Orthodox community and the exemption for certain Orthodox churches in the city from confiscation. He could not, however, produce that document. Instead, according to both Greek and Ottoman sources, Theoleptos produced two aging janissaries who swore that there had been a berat giving those rights to the Patriarch. That seemed to be sufficient to save the churches, but the extent of the Patriarch’s authority remained unclear and even contested. A berat issued to Patriarch Symeon in 1483 listed numerous cities in the southern Balkans and Anatolia and even areas outside of Ottoman control, such as Russia and Crete, as falling under his authority. But during the reign of Süleyman the autocephalous patriarchate of Peć was reconstituted. Furthermore, the patriarchate of Ohrid was recognized as an independent and seemingly coequal patriarchate by the Ottoman authorities, even though the Patriarch of Constantinople claimed that Ohrid...
